Failed federal Liberal Party candidate Patrick Lennox wrote a column for the Globe and Mail rife with exaggeration and misinformation.

Lennox gets straight into the false claim that holding a referendum to consider Alberta beginning the process for independence is an act of treason. Canadian treason is specific and serious. It involves levying war, assisting an enemy, or using force to overthrow a government. A statutory provincial plebiscite is none of those. Quebec held two sovereignty referendums. Calling a legal ballot treason empties the word.

He claims the government of Alberta ignored court rulings in putting a question to the ballot. This is untrue. Courts quashed citizen-initiated binding secession proposals for failure to consult Indigenous people. The government then put a different, non-binding “remain or start a process” question on a larger government-ordered ballot. It may be considered an end-run around the ruling, but it didn’t ignore it.

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Lennox calls all the questions being posed in the referenda anti-Canadian. Nine of them concern immigration levels, eligibility for provincial programs, and proposed shifts of constitutional power (including who picks provincial superior-court judges). Those are contested conservative policies. Quebec already runs a distinct immigration system. Provinces have fought jurisdiction since 1867. It is not unreasonable or anti-Canadian to consider such policies. Unless you are Albertan, apparently.

The claim is made that the referendum exercise is unprecedented in the democratic world. Aside from Quebec’s multiple referenda on the subject and Scotland’s more recent one, that is. That makes things less than unprecedented.

Lennox then invokes the granddaddy of insulting analogies by invoking Nazi comparisons through speaking of Popper’s paradox of tolerance and uttering the name Goebbels. This is lazy, divisive and inflammatory rhetoric, as he implies the state is offering too many freedoms and thus could be taken over by Nazis. Weimar did not fall because a province held a multi-question plebiscite. Lennox holds a low view of Albertans if he feels allowing democratic votes could lead to the creation of a contemporary Nazi state.

Lennox recently released a book which is presumably packed with the same sort of pap his column offered. That explains why he wants to tweak controversy through such a disingenuous column. He didn’t get the parliamentary salary he strove for when running for the Liberals in 2025.